a blank page

I.  why is it
    that a new notebook
    inspires us to write?

    does the white page cry out
    for the marriage to ink,
    Does it yearn?

    Or perhaps we feel
    That the lack of something existing
    in a place
    creates the immediate need
    of something there

    like when the anti-cheese sat
    broodingly on our willow-patterned plate
    Until aunt Denise, in exasperation
    went out to buy a cake
    simply to fill
    the space.

    Is this why mankind fill up
    the desert and the fields and the plains
    and the valleys, the anti-mountains
    with our houses and buildings

    and office blocks

    until we feel we’ve been
    useful?

    In that case, why do we love the sea?
    The most difficult open space for us
    to make into anti-space,
    why do we love it?

    Perhaps it is a relief
    to find something
    so obviously and blatantly more powerful,
    in which case we
    are not to blame for any failures.

II. (and yet the valleys, too
     the anti-mountains
     tomorrow will swallow our progress)

August ’05